The Form Advocate

Will Crockett

Associate Director of Research and Engagement

Case Study Snapshot

The San Francisco Shakespeare Festival is known for offering free local Shakespeare performances in the Bay area and for hosting educational camps and programs for school-age children. As part of the organization’s integration to Salesforce, staff members began using FormAssembly to eliminate paper forms while conveniently syncing data to their new CRM. Intuitive web forms allow the organization to save time and effort while keeping track of the community they serve.

The Numbers

500-700

students reached in a calendar year.

5

different outdoor venues in the San Francisco Bay area.

8

full-time staff members.

10

minutes saved per student application.

The Problem

Disconnected Enrollments and Data Silos

“

. . . we got a great education in the journey a customer may take with us, and thinking about their experience from beginning to end.

Before the organization revamped their data collection processes, enrollments for camps and programs were completed through a paper-based system. After a family submitted an initial online application, staff would locate and print the form and record the information manually. They were operating out of 3 separate databases, including Microsoft Access.

Staff encountered issues not only with time and effort, but also with tracking a person’s history. Some individuals phased out of educational programs and became donors, but this was nearly impossible to see. Data silos sprung up out of the inability to connect records. When the organization transitioned to Salesforce, they implemented FormAssembly for one seamless switch.

“I’m really glad that FormAssembly was part of our initial migration into Salesforce, because the two products are really one and the same for us. When we learned both at the same time, we got a great education in the journey a customer may take with us, and thinking about their experience from beginning to end,” Crockett explained.

The Solution

Integrated, Online Application System

The San Francisco Shakespeare Festival experiences the benefits of better data to power their nonprofit goals. In turn, that data helps create better business processes that keep everyday tasks more manageable. Whereas it used to take roughly 10 minutes to process one student’s application fully (multiplied by 400 students), staff can now sort through hundreds of student enrollments in a fraction of the time.

“It’s literally like we got an employee back. There’s just no comparison between what we used to do to get all our enrollments in, versus what we did last summer that took maybe an hour a week,” Crockett explained.

Salesforce Integration

FormAssembly’s powerful Salesforce integration is the backbone for the work that the organization does to manage their data. The organization values the ability to see the customer journey from start to finish, which becomes more manageable with FormAssembly.

“When you think about the architecture of a web form and the architecture of Salesforce at the same time, it helps you think more critically about what you’re doing with the people you interact with,” Crockett said.

Staff also use complex Salesforce lookup rules to keep track of participants within the same household. As their daily work involves serving siblings with similar names and age ranges, matching forms to predetermined records in Salesforce eliminates frustration and disorganization.

Easy Troubleshooting and Customer Support

Even without extensive web development or coding knowledge, staff members can operate and edit forms as needed. They even use hidden fields to their advantage when camps fill up or they need to close enrollment. FormAssembly’s professional Customer Support has also proven helpful during implementation stages.

“If I make a mistake in building or connecting the form, or have logic in there that’s not working as it should, it’s very easy to fix something,” Crockett said.

Use Case

The primary use case involves enrollment forms for student programs that take place over the summer and throughout the academic year. Camps take place at a variety of local locations, including schools, parks, and churches. An important aspect of the enrollment form is to ensure that respondents know not only when they’re attending camp, but where they need to be in order to attend.

Staff use conditional logic features throughout the forms, as some programs mandate that campers live within certain area codes. Pricing of each camp can also change, as rates transition from early bird to regular enrollment rates. The organization’s enrollment forms integrate with Authorize.Net to simplify the payment collection process.

Student enrollment form for ages 7-13. (click to enlarge)

Form connectors help staff access trends in data year-to-year.

FormAssembly’s connectors provide the ability to report in dashboards. Previously, information was stored across multiple databases, but now it’s housed within one system. Using Salesforce, staff can easily see registration trends from year-to-year. This allows Minerd, as a Salesforce admin, to be less hands-on when it comes to sharing data. Using dashboard reporting empowers staff with the ability to pull their own numbers and research as needed.

Moreover, the connector setups are saved, even as they clone different forms. This means that staff can save additional time when re-creating new, complex forms.

Student decisions are trackable with enrollment agreement forms.

Maryville also uses FormAssembly web forms to speed up their decision and enrollment processes. Intent forms confirm a student’s decision to enroll at Maryville in an upcoming term. Students can also complete housing applications and submit payments for the Enrollment Advance Tuition Payment required prior to attendance. Using the Prefill Connector, data is pre-populated from Salesforce to eliminate extra time and hassle for the student, as well as prevent duplicate records in the CRM.

Students can also check on the status of their enrollment steps, as they progress through each stage in the process. In particular, Maryville uses forms to streamline the enrollment process for international students, who often need to submit letters of recommendation, resumes, and supplemental documentation. Maryville’s form design allows for these students to easily upload and manage their enrollment materials.

International Student Application Status form

Web forms help support important academic decision processes.

Maryville leverages FormAssembly’s capabilities to creatively streamline some of their internal processes, like scholarship forms and surveys.

At the graduate school level, some faculty members help in the admissions decision process. FormAssembly provides a workaround for faculty who need student information, but don’t have administrative access to a Salesforce account. To address this issue, Maryville uses a two-step form with prefilled data, in which faculty can make admissions decisions directly within a student’s form based upon the populated information.

Web forms also help the university alleviate frustration in the process of awarding scholarships. Most recently, Maryville used a two-step Presidential Scholarship form that current students and faculty/staff used to evaluate prospective student interviews. As a result of the new process, the university was able to deliver scholarship decisions to students more quickly and efficiently.

Decision form for graduate business students

What’s Next?

In the future, the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival hopes to implement FormAssembly as part of their donor prospecting efforts. Although not everyone in the organization has a donation or fundraising background, most of the staff regularly interact with potential donors. Moving forward, they want all staff to be able to record interactions with potential donors, which can easily be accomplished through Salesforce and FormAssembly.

If business processes and data silos are hindering your nonprofit organization, find out how FormAssembly can help you save time, money, and effort.